Christopher R Taylor

I wouldn't allow it because you're not actually dispelling the power.  PD and ED are not separate powers within Resistant Protection (unless build that way for some reason), so you can't shut off some of the power.  Dispel is all-or-nothing.  

As I understand the rules, any power that's been dispelled can always already be turned on the next phase; dispel doesn't have permanent effects.

I think Scott Baker is right, he's using reductio ad absurdem, but if your basis for accepting characters is "the concept is sound and I don't want to nerf people just to keep an arbitrary sense of balance" then wild variations in point values should be on the table as well.  If you choose to run your game that way, of course, that's your choice - as I noted above, sometimes being more loose with the restrictions can work for you.  But that's what leads to the kind of dilemmas you mentioned, and your question was "how do you manage loophole powers."

That's how: by limiting character abilities to the same rough scheme of raw power.

Until very recently in history, "he" has always been generic for "person" in the English language.

I'm more flexible than a lot of GMs, such as when I let a character named Maelstrom have a Mental Defense Aid (MD is standard EGO/5 base in my games).  Zap, now (long fade time) everyone in the group has 10+ mental defense!  Some GMs would have howled "but then my mentalist villains are useless!" but I thought "hmm, this opens up some interesting possibilities" such as making them very resistant, if not immune to most mentalists such as the guys in Psi.  

Ultimately it also played into my hands as a retired character gone villain developed a device that gave him personal immunity to Maelstrom's MD aid.  So he was able to simply bypass it.  They simply had no idea they were having mental illusions in their heads at first, because they were so used to ignoring that kind of power.

Kestrel Arts is my little company and we put out Hero Games products.  So far I've published a big spellbook and a fantasy hero adventure; I have a bestiary full of interesting stuff on the way, then I wonder what people are looking for.

Nah, the hammer isn't heavy, its just unliftable.  The magic prevents people from picking it up, not by making it weigh billions of tons, (unless you're in the ultimate universe where they crap all over magic) but by enchanting it to be impossible to lift by someone unworthy.  Thor just happens to be worthy.  Most of the time.

Mjolnir is heavy, but not tons of heavy, Loki could move out from under it if he wanted.  I would guess it only weighs a few hundred pounds at most.

It really doesn't take very many dice of mental entangle to stop just about anyone, its sort of silly to get too carried away with the points.

When we play Call of Cthulhu we only play short bursts of games, just a few sessions.  It doesn't seem like a long campaign sort of game heh

I am hard at work writing up and polishing up the Jolrhos Bestiary, a collection of monsters and creatures unique to or unusual to my campaign setting.  So no orcs, dragons, or zombies, but lots of other oddities.

I'm close to finishing up the writing but I'm curious about something and you the reader here can help me out!  I have the basics of a "body loot" chart so that when a creature is defeated it can be 'harvested' for lack of a better word for scales, teeth, special organs, etc, and the GM knows exactly what's going to be found and how to get it, what its worth, and what it may be useful for.

Now, I won't be going into detailed specifics in this volume on making things out of these raw materials such as alchemy ingredients or chitin, but this would at least give players the ability to get good stuff off creatures other than coins or other loot. And players of computer games are going to be pretty familiar with the concept.  There's no junk loot (what merchant really wants a spleen from a bear anyway?) just usable stuff or things that reasonably would sell.

Now, I'm not sure this is worth the effort to include in the book, but it seems like a natural fit.

So what say you, is this something you'd care to have in the bestiary or is it just fluff you wouldn't care about as a GM or player?  

Should it be in or out?

It looked very complicated to get the aid to match any attack of any kind with any special effect.  Power Pool does it simply and clean.

You don't actually have to move something to get out from under it, but that's a side issue.  Putting the hammer on someone to pin them down has been used in the comics, but its a very rare use.

Yeah I'd call that a special effect of it being a unique focus.

I would probably leave the "put hammer on someone" trick out of the 250 point version because its so rarely used and such a specific use of a special effect.

I think he's not saying "you can't have enchanted weapons" but rather "you can't cast spells without a focus and that focus has to be non-combat"  So a quarterstaff is out, but a walking stick is in.

There are a lot of changes to WoW that are ... underwhelming.  The last few expansions have been increasingly annoying, I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to last in the game.

For this spell, I took advantage of the magic system in place in the Fantasy Codex.  Because it does not use any power framework, you can build spells which have a power framework in them and not violate the rules.  This gave me tremendous flexibility for spell design, such as this spell which enhances any attack spell against a weakened target.

They'll all be in a book release at some point, but I probably should add a quick summary to the freebies.  For the most part, the materials are just lighter and tougher, although a few do have some minor effects.  Naurithil glows in starlight (and, if your world has a moon, moonlight).  Mithril has hardened defenses and power defense equal to its rPD.  Blood Iron gains 1 damage class of damage when it has drawn blood (does body damage through defenses) - but only 1 DC, it does not stack.  Ebon does a DOT after it hits, through defenses, but corrupts the owner over time.  Evantine gives power defense and presence (defensive only) equal to its rPD.  Dragonbone and Dragonhide give matching enchantment points; that is, up to the body of the piece, experience points spent for enchanting are matched by the item (so a 4 body item will match up to 4 xps spent by the player to enchant it).

The Jolrhos Field Guide is going to have all this stuff, details on many trade skills (such as leatherworking etc) and how to make things out of all the weird materials as well as acquire them, and has full details on herbs and poisons as well as other wierd plants and substances around the world.  I hope to get that published some time next year, but I have to get my bestiary out first.

In theory once I have the bestiary, spellbook, field guide, and treasury out as published works, I'll have the basis for publishing adventures that reference all those works and I can just focus on adventures.  At some point I might publish a "Player's Handbook" including basics on the campaign setting I use as well, but I'm not convinced there's much demand for yet another campaign setting.

Thanks for your interest, Jkeown!

The best time travel adventure I've read is the Nazi World one in Champions 3-D.  It had exactly the right level of awful misery for a Nazi America and yet the right way to make a difference and turn things around.

Yeah you can make Hero very lethal and dangerous for characters, but somehow the rules don't lend themselves well to hopeless fear and that sense that you're overmatched and in danger of your life at all times.

Marvel definitely could use a reboot after some of the atrocities they've committed (Civil War, Clone Saga, Fall of the Mutants).

Mostly I like stuff like Astro City, which was worth its weight in leaf gold the first years and still is quite good.

I agree.  You can even set up the character sheet to be more familiar, in the layout of other games so that they can grasp it easier.  By stripping down the initial intoduction to Hero, you can win people over by its flexibility, power, and freedom that other games just cannot match.

If you think back, when you started playing D&D, did the DM throw the DMG at you and say "all you gotta do is learn this?"  No, he helped you roll up a guy and you started playing, and he handled the DM guide and all the rest.  For some reason we get the impression that we have to teach them all of Hero Games at once, and we don't.

There was a villain in Strike Force that did that; he had the power to control other people's powers and bodies.  It was a really cool concept, and some day I want to use it in a game.

Yeah I could use some more players in my group.  As we've gotten older several of the standbys have moved on or gotten too busy with life and kids to have time for the hobby.

Everyone in my Hero games has mental defense as a starting 2 point stat, which would make that kind of character less effective, and yeah if someone was in a party that read books and painted landscapes while the mage took several minutes to cast spells on creatures far away to utterly dominate the campaign, I'd start giving them more ego and mental defense as well.

I've adjusted the poll slightly with a few more choices; to be more clear about style.